i am now reading the wiki article on messages in bottles and... i gotta tell you
some of these entries are... kinda wild. i mean the vast majority are literally either professional or amateur scientists doing it out of curiousity or research, or just average folks going "hey this might be fun, let's toss this message out there, see who reads it, maybe it'll never be found i dunno!" Some are genuinely sad and tragic. A couple are hilarious though
very very amused that this advertising stunt got sabotaged by enterprisng folks who saw all that high end tech being wasted on marketing gimmicks and knew they could put it to far better use.
Like the one done by a norweigan softdrinks company, which was outfitted with all sorts of gps tracking and radar and identification gubbings, lots of high end tech inside the giant soft drink bottle...
...which had its electronics stolen by pirates before it finished its five month journey